I know. I didn't. I bought some of the the Vanguard US based REITs Index fund along with the Vanguard Small Cap Growth Index fund.

My question was meant to be broader and obviously not stated properly. I am curious how other people feel about International REITs (and US based REITs) Index funds right now as a potential investment. I am also tangentially curious how people feel about that recent Chinese market turmoil regarding the real estate sector just because I would love to know what folks who do this for a (professional/semi) living think on the matter for my own education.

What would give me pause about Chinese real estate is the nagging concern that the government could intervene at any moment and completely alter the investing landscape there, should they fell it necessary to "fix" something or control something that wasn't headed down the one true path. Even in nominally capitalist societies, real estate has a lot of baggage of off-market forces. In an economy like the Chinese one, there's still the command economy/5-year type plan jazz that might be going on on top of everything else which is already wacky.

I have literally no confidence in my ability to directly invest in "chinese" anything. Too many of my friends have had sums go to zero after a shining quarterly statemtns release is shown to be complete farce.

Gold is almost starting to be interesting. I don't love it as an asset per se but its interesting to see the current dynamic.

People were piling in partially because governments are printing money. Then people pile in a bit more when bank depositors take a hit in Cyprus. Then broke governments start selling off their stashes and its into the shitter. To me, the governments are looking like distressed sellers and as people tally up the broke governments and their stashes, the downward pressure makes it look interesting as the weaker hands get shook out.

Not saying I would go load the boat or anything but I do find things more interesting when I see sellers that have to sell in a downward moving market.

Gold is almost starting to be interesting. I don't love it as an asset per se but its interesting to see the current dynamic.

People were piling in partially because governments are printing money. Then people pile in a bit more when bank depositors take a hit in Cyprus. Then broke governments start selling off their stashes and its into the shitter. To me, the governments are looking like distressed sellers and as people tally up the broke governments and their stashes, the downward pressure makes it look interesting as the weaker hands get shook out.

Not saying I would go load the boat or anything but I do find things more interesting when I see sellers that have to sell in a downward moving market.

On a 10 year plot the hiccups over the past year or so don't look so bad.

Is gold like oil or "rare" heavy earth metals in that if the big money decides that the high prices are here to stay they'll start mining lots more from sources which weren't viable at the lower prices, knocking the long term price back down significantly? I don't feel like I've got much of a handle on gold prices as more governments divest themselves of it and adopt monetary policies further disconnecting it from world currencies.

Gold is almost starting to be interesting. I don't love it as an asset per se but its interesting to see the current dynamic.

People were piling in partially because governments are printing money. Then people pile in a bit more when bank depositors take a hit in Cyprus. Then broke governments start selling off their stashes and its into the shitter. To me, the governments are looking like distressed sellers and as people tally up the broke governments and their stashes, the downward pressure makes it look interesting as the weaker hands get shook out.

Not saying I would go load the boat or anything but I do find things more interesting when I see sellers that have to sell in a downward moving market.

On a 10 year plot the hiccups over the past year or so don't look so bad.

Is gold like oil or "rare" heavy earth metals in that if the big money decides that the high prices are here to stay they'll start mining lots more from sources which weren't viable at the lower prices, knocking the long term price back down significantly? I don't feel like I've got much of a handle on gold prices as more governments divest themselves of it and adopt monetary policies further disconnecting it from world currencies.

A lot of mineral mines reopened or are in the process of being opened through the past 4 years because these commodities have been going up in value making the work profitable in places it wasn't economically feasible to mine. The problem is that the prices did not keep going up, but have leveled off in the last year so many in the mining industry are now unable to make enough to be profitable and stay in operation and are trying to sell their mining rights to anyone they can for cheap. Having governments sell off their own deposits floods the market by adding an additional large volume to a weak market which is pretty much knocking gold prices back down. Its fun to watch once you see how all the pieces come together.

Is gold like oil or "rare" heavy earth metals in that if the big money decides that the high prices are here to stay they'll start mining lots more from sources which weren't viable at the lower prices, knocking the long term price back down significantly? I don't feel like I've got much of a handle on gold prices as more governments divest themselves of it and adopt monetary policies further disconnecting it from world currencies.

A lot of mineral mines reopened or are in the process of being opened through the past 4 years because these commodities have been going up in value making the work profitable in places it wasn't economically feasible to mine. The problem is that the prices did not keep going up, but have leveled off in the last year so many in the mining industry are now unable to make enough to be profitable and stay in operation and are trying to sell their mining rights to anyone they can for cheap. Having governments sell off their own deposits floods the market by adding an additional large volume to a weak market which is pretty much knocking gold prices back down. Its fun to watch once you see how all the pieces come together.

I understand each of the pieces you describe. I couldn't say that I feel confident understanding how they come together in terms of making a prediction about the future. Gold looks extremely expensive right now compared to historical norms at the same time as various countries have been divesting themselves of it.

The question is whether the price is being mostly dictated by speculators who will run for the door once it doesn't look very profitable to stay or by people hedging or who actually have an industrial or other use for it in which case things might be a bit more stable.

I am Jeff Smith and my claim to fame on Ars is...ahhh...making people believe I started threads that angrysand actually started...or maybe I posted from your house while you were sleeping...or something.

And on topic...from Warren Buffett:

Quote:

I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (NYSE:XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.

I am Jeff Smith and my claim to fame on Ars is...ahhh...making people believe I started threads that angrysand actually started...or maybe I posted from your house while you were sleeping...or something.

And on topic...from Warren Buffett:

Quote:

I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (NYSE:XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.

Thats a great quote. Could I take a cubic foot though and use it as a foot stool

On a 10 year plot the hiccups over the past year or so don't look so bad.

Is gold like oil or "rare" heavy earth metals in that if the big money decides that the high prices are here to stay they'll start mining lots more from sources which weren't viable at the lower prices, knocking the long term price back down significantly? I don't feel like I've got much of a handle on gold prices as more governments divest themselves of it and adopt monetary policies further disconnecting it from world currencies.

Gold is (IMO) downright irrational stuff at the best of times.

Right now, the problem is, even after falling off a bit, it has had a run up well ahead of the observed inflation and even ahead of, say, the '70s where we had bad inflation.

In short, the "logical" reason to hold gold is way, way ahead of itself. Even if you believe the gold story, I would suggest buying it later with cheaper, inflated dollars.

If anything, it could (for all we know) come down further, but the key is that the upside appears limited. We didn't discover some new, industrial need or anything. Even given the fear that drives Gold markets (which are often transitory, alas, and dangerous for the non-expert), there's a lot of inflation "priced in" that hasn't happened yet. Today.

Saw some of my stocks absolutely plummet, but they've recovered quickly. FNMA was down around 40% for the day, others not far behind. I took advantage and picked up a few shares of FMCC, didn't get it at the bottom but still made a nice gain as they recovered... just not sure why the drop in the 1st place. Every single one of my holdings except for 1 were in the red for the day, then started recovering.. still down around 1% overall for the day, but was down 3-4% an hour ago.

Saw some of my stocks absolutely plummet, but they've recovered quickly. FNMA was down around 40% for the day, others not far behind. I took advantage and picked up a few shares of FMCC, didn't get it at the bottom but still made a nice gain as they recovered... just not sure why the drop in the 1st place. Every single one of my holdings except for 1 were in the red for the day, then started recovering.. still down around 1% overall for the day, but was down 3-4% an hour ago.

Whenever I see something like this that isn't immediately correlated to something obvious (terror attack, OPEC announcement, policy change, poor .gov reports) I tend to think "artifact of HFT"

Saw some of my stocks absolutely plummet, but they've recovered quickly. FNMA was down around 40% for the day, others not far behind. I took advantage and picked up a few shares of FMCC, didn't get it at the bottom but still made a nice gain as they recovered... just not sure why the drop in the 1st place. Every single one of my holdings except for 1 were in the red for the day, then started recovering.. still down around 1% overall for the day, but was down 3-4% an hour ago.

Whenever I see something like this that isn't immediately correlated to something obvious (terror attack, OPEC announcement, policy change, poor .gov reports) I tend to think "artifact of HFT"

That was honestly my thought too... it was up nearly 30%, then dropped almost 70% to 40% down on the day. Saw quite a few others take nosedives, but didn't see anything on the news, so just curious.

Things are a bit screwy, fundamentally, across credit and equities markets alike. The stock market has been soaring recently and the bond markets, meanwhile... have been soaring too. As the Wall Street Journal put it a few weeks ago, "they can't both be right."

The same WSJ column fingers (correctly, IMO) the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates low by any means possible. Neither the Fed's policy nor the matched movements of credit and equities markets are sustainable over the long term. Michael Cembalest made a related observation in yesterday's Eye on the Market newsletter:

Michael Cembalest wrote:

The Federal Reserve is beginning to lay out a framework for ending its asset purchases, and for eventually (2015?) raising policy rates. The consensus view is that markets will digest this calmly as long as growth is doing well. Perhaps, but keep something in mind: since the Greenspan-Bernanke era of using cheap money to solve economic problems began, equity market volatility has been considerably higher than other periods during the 20th century, other than the WWI-Depression-WWII period. It has been even higher than before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, when the U.S. was beset with frequent depressions and bank runs. The table below goes through the details, by era and by Fed leadership. That doesn’t mean that cheap money “doesn’t work”, or “isn’t the right thing to do”; history will be the judge of that. But it does mean that sometimes, equity markets will run ahead of both profits and economics (as they have this year, as the melt-up continues this morning); that equity markets will be volatile; and that there are risks associated with eventual cheap money withdrawal.

I was talking last week with some credit guys who were joking about how many credit-oriented funds were now taking significant equity or quasi-equity positions in search of yield. Given the current low rates, there's an unsurprising uptick in corporate debt refinancings and borrowing to pay stockholders (through dividends or share buybacks). Some of that is being done opportunistically by highly stable companies. But there are also a lot of dubious corporate borrowers out there loading up on new or additional financing to the point that it's starting to remind people of 2007.

The problem this poses for even relatively sophisticated individual investors is obvious: where do you put your money if everything looks expensive? I can't say that I have much of an answer. It's well and good to have a well supported thesis explaining why these gains will eventually slow or reverse. Timing is another matter though, and the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

If anything, it could (for all we know) come down further, but the key is that the upside appears limited. We didn't discover some new, industrial need or anything. Even given the fear that drives Gold markets (which are often transitory, alas, and dangerous for the non-expert), there's a lot of inflation "priced in" that hasn't happened yet.

India values holds in gold for cultural reasons, and India is rapidly becoming more prosperous.

If anything, it could (for all we know) come down further, but the key is that the upside appears limited. We didn't discover some new, industrial need or anything. Even given the fear that drives Gold markets (which are often transitory, alas, and dangerous for the non-expert), there's a lot of inflation "priced in" that hasn't happened yet.

India values holds in gold for cultural reasons, and India is rapidly becoming more prosperous.

Having witnessed firsthand this cultural nuttiness, yeah, they obsess over the stuff.

Huh. That was unexpected. I'd hoped that Microsoft/Nokia would establish itself as the third player in the phone market and bet on that on their stock, but I didn't think Microsoft would just buy the whole Lumia business.

If +40% isn't in your take profit band, then I don't think I'm qualified to advise you.

++

The only question in my mind is whether you sell out entirely or just rent out your shares by selling covered calls. Part of this is how many shares you have. If it's a thousand shares, sell ten contracts worth of slightly higher calls. If the price comes back down before expiration you'll bank whatever you got from the calls; if the price keeps going up you get the cost of the calls plus the strike price per share; if the price stays flat and the options expire you win the most since you get the call price and keep the shares.

I'm not sticking around for possible better price due to activist shareholders being annoying or just the Nokia Siemens Networks division and a bag of gold. If I'm going to continue the bet that Windows Phone will be a profitable 3rd competitor, I'll have to switch the bet from NOK to MSFT anyway.

I dumped the shares in two orders during the pre-open session for $5.50 average on a hunch. People kinda overreact to news and come to their senses over a few days, the most recent example is MSFT jumping to $35.50 when Ballmer quit but calmed down to ~$34 in just two days.

It could have gone the other way but I would be happy with the result either way, unrealized profit is just a number until you cash it in.

I'm sure the investment banks running the IPO will make a lot of money in fees and if that is not enough they and their preferred customers can run a scam to short the stock like Goldman did with Facebook.

The insiders and option holders will certainly make out well. I don't think twitter is much of a long term investment. They send 140 character microblog posts and links to stupid pictures. Facebook is at least very good at something much more difficult. Twitter is the most popular at something pretty easy.